Sunday Poem

Branch Library

I wish I could find that skinny, long-beaked boy
      who perched in the branches of the old branch library.

He spent the Sabbath flying between the wobbly stacks
        and the flimsy wooden tables on the second floor,

pecking at nuts, nesting in broken spines, scratching
        notes under his own corner patch of sky.

I’d give anything to find that birdy boy again
        bursting out into the dusky blue afternoon

with his satchel of scrawls and scribbles,
        radiating heat, singing with joy.
.

by Edward Hirsch
from The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems
publisher: Knopf, 2010